Christmas Past
by moonswirl
Summary: Gleekathon, days 1513, 1515, 1517, 1519: When they were five years old, Rachel and Quinn couldn't wait for Christmas and for the chance to do as Sunshine Girls did. - Sunshine Girls 1 series extra - Christmas story 1 of 3
1. The Christmas Sunshine Fairies

_Started my daily ficlets to make the hiatus pass, then decided to keep going with a 2nd cycle, and then a 3rd, 4th, etc through 72nd cycle. Now cycle 73!_

* * *

**"Christmas Past"  
(First of three four-part Christmas stories)**

**1. The Christmas Sunshine Fairies  
Young Quinn & Rachel  
Sunshine Girls 1 series extra**

It would be well known to all, that the All-Mighty Sunshine Girls made their business in the joy of others. Surely, if their goal was joy, then Christmas above all was to be prime time for banishing unhappiness.

The first step to achieving this goal had been to make cookies, which Mrs. Fabray had been helping them to do. She'd had them set up at the kitchen table, with a bowl of the dough they'd watched her mix together, where they would take scoops of the sticky thing, roll it in their small hands, then give it a good press before pressing the cookie cutters down. They would gather the extra and return it to the bowl, then start all over again.

The cookies cautiously made by the pair of five-year-olds had been slipped into the oven, and now with nothing to do but wait, they considered the destination of those cookies. It would have been easy to split them in half, one half going to Rachel and her fathers, and the other half staying at the Fabray house for Quinn, her parents, and her older sister. But then they'd gotten to thinking.

Quinn remembered her neighbor, Mrs. Ryan, who had broken her ankle a few weeks ago, and she thought a cookie might make her happy. And then Rachel thought of giving one to her dance teacher. The more minutes went by, more cookies were finding themselves assigned to this person or that. Eventually they had gone to find Quinn's sister and made her write down all the names so they wouldn't forget any. When they were done, they asked how many names there were, and Quinn's sister told them there were thirty-one. The girls ran down the stairs to Mrs. Fabray and asked how many cookies they'd made. Judy looked in to the oven and counted quickly to inform them they'd made thirty-two.

"We can do it! We can give them a cookie!" Rachel exclaimed excitedly.

"But they get just one," Quinn frowned.

"But they'll be happy," Rachel countered. Quinn thought to herself, then smiled.

"The Sunshine Girls on a... on a mission," she declared, and the plan was set.

When the cookies had been taken out of the oven, with their sleeves pulled away, the girls had gotten to decorating the thirty-two cookies, which were then packed into plastic boxes, with a sheet between each level. Mrs. Fabray had dinner to see to, but then Quinn's sister, just barely old enough to go out on her own, had convinced their mother to let her take the girls out to do as they wanted. Now it was time for Rachel and Quinn to disappear into the guise of Beams and Rays, the All-Mighty Sunshine Girls.

"Wait!" Quinn had gasped. "What about her?" she pointed out the door. "They know she's my sister, they'll know it's me!"

"Right!" Rachel gasped. "We have to change her, too!"

"The vest, with the hood! Mom's huge sunglasses!" Quinn dashed off.

Quinn's sister had been fairly easy to convince, so that a few minutes later, the three girls, carrying the two containers of cookies, set out to work through their list. The first cookie had gone to Mrs. Ryan and, upon receiving her treat, the woman had smiled so brightly, and the girls knew they were doing right.

It would take a long time for all thirty-one cookies to find their home, and it would come to be that the smaller girls became tired, but then all it would take to give them a new wind was another smile, another satisfied customer, and they were good to go. Twenty-nine, thirty... Thirty-one. The last one was gone, and the Sunshine Girls were free to turn back for the Fabray house. They were tired, but even more than that, they were hungry, and the promise of food was fuel enough to get them the rest of the way.

The tired Sunshine Girls had consumed their dinner in a flash, and since Rachel had been granted permission to stay the night, they had gone right to bed.

They had slept, tutus and all, for a few hours before they had both woken up, to a darkened and quiet house. They looked at each other, and the idea they had was shared. They smiled, and they got out of bed, padding carefully down the stairs, to the kitchen counter where the plate sat, the lone cookie sitting there, shaped like a Christmas tree and smothered in frosting and sprinkles.

"We can make more tomorrow?" Rachel suggested, only now realizing some of these had been meant for them.

"Okay," Quinn shrugged, stretching as tall as her toes would go, reaching for the cookie and snapping it in half. "Here," she gave one piece to Rachel. There was something about eating their half a cookie in secret that made it very exciting.

"We can bring cookies to school!" Rachel thought aloud, chewing on her cookie half.

"You're going to turn into regular little bakers, aren't you?" The girls startled and looked up to find Judy Fabray, standing outside the kitchen. Quinn had attempted to hide what was left of her cookie by holding it to herself and keeping her hands over it to keep it hidden, while Rachel had stuck her part in her mouth, clamped her lips together and put her hands behind her back. "You, chew," Judy pointed to the little brunette before turning to her daughter. "You're going to get it all over yourself, show me your hands." Quinn slowly pulled her hands down. The frosted side made that the half a tree was stuck to her fingers. Judy went and got a wet cloth, and while Quinn ate the cookie, her mother cleaned out her hand.

"You're not mad?" Rachel sounded surprised.

"Well, it's almost Christmas," Judy reasoned. "And you have been good girls this year, especially today. We wouldn't want one little cookie."

"Half," Rachel piped in.

"Half cookie," Judy corrected, "Ruining things between you, and… Santa," she gave them a look, and they gasped, shaking their heads. "Right, so we'll keep this between us, if you promise not to do it again?"

"Promise," Quinn spoke for them both.

"Rachel, we're going to get our Christmas tree tomorrow, would you like to come with us?" They would have squealed if they could, but Judy had quickly stuck a finger to her lips, and they'd remembered everyone else was asleep, so they nodded. "Good, now off to bed."

TO BE CONTINUED (SATURDAY)


	2. Christmas Lights

**"Christmas Past"**

**2. Christmas Lights**

Experiencing Christmas in her own home and in the Fabray home was as different as different could be for Rachel, and she would never say it to her own fathers, her child's mind perhaps getting itself convinced that it would upset them so much they wouldn't care for her anymore, but she would try and spend as much time as she could with Quinn and her family at this time of the year, because it was like stepping into a properly magical land. And if it had been magical before, then it was about to become even more so, because today they were headed to the lot and they would pick a tree to decorate.

As soon as they'd stepped out of the car, they wanted to go and look, to see all the trees. Judy Fabray had made them promise to both stay in the lot and make sure to always keep her, Russell, or Quinn's sister in sight. More than happy to oblige, the girls had been let loose, and hand in hand they'd dashed off on their quest. They would see all the trees, and even though their short stature would impair a thing or two, they would scope out the very best tree there was to find.

"It has to be big!" Rachel looked up.

"It has to be green!" Quinn took a sidelong look at a tree whose needles were looking more on the brown side than anything else.

"Our neighbors' tree is pink," Rachel informed her, and Quinn blinked. For a split second, a pink tree sounded very interesting to the five-year-old, but then the image she had cemented in her head did not mesh well with this new option.

"Green," she nodded again.

"Look at that one!" Rachel gasped, pointing behind Quinn's head. The blonde looked, and she gasped, too. "Come on!" they went for it.

It was probably not the biggest tree in the world, or even in the lot, but from where they stood, it looked magnificently gigantic. They touched its branches, laughed at the tickling of the needles, until Rachel pricked her finger and squeaked, and then there was no more touching it. The tree had hurt one of them, and that had gone and killed its chances of ever entering the Fabray house.

"Look, there's another one!" Rachel was not distracted very long, and once more they went to check it out. They'd barely made it that another girl came skidding over to the same tree. She looked just about the same age as Quinn's sister and must have had a better idea of how to pick a tree, because she started looking around it, they weren't sure what at, and then she stopped, as though whatever had brought her to look at this one in particular had up and left her.

"What's wrong?" Quinn asked her. The girl looked at them, the two smaller girls, then frowned.

"It's too expensive," she said and, at the looks on their faces, "It costs too much money."

"Oh… Well, pick another one," Quinn seemed to find the solution very simple.

"All the good ones cost too much," she shook her head. "The only ones we can get are bad."

"We can find one," Rachel told her, and Quinn silently agreed. "We can help!" All at once, the Sunshine Girls had found themselves called to work.

Figuring they could go further now that they were accompanied by an older person, Rachel and Quinn had pulled the girl along and, all together, they had gone from tree to tree. Whenever they would find one they thought would work, they would go to the girl, whose name they learned to be Julie, and they would show it to her. But then she would check the price and she would shake her head. This never stopped the others, who went on to find another tree, and another, and another…

It had not felt like that much time to them, but then finally they had shown her one tree, and all of a sudden the girl's face had lit up like, well, a Christmas tree. She called for her parents, who weren't that far off, and the victorious Sunshine Girls watched the family head off with their tree just as Russell Fabray had located his daughter and her friend. He had scolded them both, which had threatened to ruin the entire expedition, including what they'd done for Julie, but then he had settled down and brought them to see the tree they had found. It was so tall and majestic to them, and at once their smiles had returned.

With their own tree bought and paid for, mounted on the hood of the car, the Fabrays and Rachel had brought it back to the house, where it was mounted up in place. The boxes of lights and ornaments and the likes had been retrieved from the attic, and the decoration had begun. Each in turn, the girls would find themselves lifted up, to help place some of the ornaments on the branches higher than the lower branches, where their arms were able to reach.

It had been up to Quinn's sister to get the angel on top of the tree, the finishing touch, and then they could step back, flip the switch, and the lights bloomed all around, much to the littler girls' joy. They'd both stood there so long, Judy had to remind them how they'd asked to make more cookies, and how Rachel's fathers would be coming to pick her up in a few hours, for either of them to accept to step away.

But once the new batch of cookies had been sent into the oven, there was nothing to stop them from returning to sit and look at the tree they hadn't picked out themselves in the end but were still enormously proud of. When her fathers had come to get her, Rachel had asked them if she could stay at the Fabrays', with Quinn, the night Santa would come. They would sleep near the tree, and maybe they could meet him. The parents had shared a knowing look, and in the end all had agreed. It was going to make their daughters happy, and in the end, that had been all the reason they'd needed.

TO BE CONTINUED (MONDAY)


	3. Silver Lit Bells

**"Christmas Past"**

**3. Silver Lit Bells**

They had made so many new cookies that Rachel's fathers had ended up joining the Fabrays for dinner, so that the girls could finish what they'd started. There had been one batch, as had been the original plan the day before, which was split between the two families, but then there was one more batch which they made and packaged and that Quinn would get to bring in on their next day at pre-school before she and Rachel could bring it in to the teachers and other people they would frequent in and around the school. If it had been up to them, they would have made even more and given them to the children, too, but they'd had to put a limit to it before they hit baking overload.

Rachel had arrived first, and while the other children were running around on the playground, she was posted in wait for Quinn to join her. As soon as she'd seen the car coming though, she went up to stand by the fence. Quinn was led in by her mother, who had the bag in hand.

"I want it!" Rachel insisted, reaching over.

"Alright, just be careful," Judy had smirked before handing the bag over.

"Wait for me!" Quinn had called out, quickly kissing her mother goodbye before dashing after her friend. It had been Quinn's sister's idea for them to make small packages, the better to make distribution easier.

They had given the first and the second package to the two of them who were standing in the playground with them, looking over the lot of them. The man and the woman had thanked them profusely, both of them inquiring as to whether they had made the cookies themselves, which they confirmed they had done. With a promise of how they couldn't wait to eat the baked goods, the two adults had thanked the girls, who had quickly moved on.

When they had been brought into the school, they had made three more deliveries before they were left with their last and biggest box. This one was to be given to their teacher.

Only their teacher had not been there. Instead, the woman from the playground had come in with them, explaining their teacher had not arrived yet and might not arrive for a while, if she came at all on that day. Quinn had turned to Rachel with a quizzical look: what were they supposed to do? Rachel was the one carrying the box at the moment, and as they'd tied a ribbon complete with a very small but very functioning sort of bell that jingled every time Rachel moved the box in any way, she wasn't being particularly discreet.

Rachel didn't know what to do, but clearly they were going to have to find something. It wasn't long that the sound of the bell had been noticed by the other children in their classroom, and as the sweet scent of the cookies was emanating strongly from the box, there was no point pretending there was anything else in that box. That knowledge had circulated like wild fire, and now they had a roomful of ravenous five-year-olds giving them wide stares.

"What do we do?" Rachel had whispered to Quinn, keeping from breaking eye contact with the rest of them, as though one moment of inattention would have meant finding herself pounced in a flash.

"I don't know," Quinn whispered back, doing the same. "Maybe she can hide it," she pointed to the substitute.

"My dad sneaks into the kitchen and eats stuff all the time at night. Pop doesn't like it when he does that," she shook her head.

"I don't get it," Quinn frowned.

"Someone will eat them. No, we have to protect the cookies," she decided, and after a moment of hesitation, Quinn had steeled herself: they were Sunshine Girls, they could do this.

Once their substitute had gotten around to making them do this thing or that, it had been slightly easier to keep the others from staring at them or the box, but they knew this wouldn't keep them in the clear by any means. There had been a few near misses, and they were just hoping that their teacher would arrive soon.

It was just getting to be lunch time when they spotted her through the large windows of their classroom. They had gone to the substitute to ask if they could go out and give the box, but the woman had told them they needed to stay as they were.

"But she's here!" Quinn pointed back.

"We have to give her this!" Rachel showed the box, which gave a jolly jingle. "They're hungry," she spoke with a near fright in her voice, indicating her classmates. It had made the woman chuckle and, finally, relent.

"Alright, come with me," she led them to the door, opened it, then signalled to their teacher, who'd been speaking with the principal. The teacher held up a finger, telling her to wait. Finally, a minute later, she'd approached, and while the substitute went back in and shut the door, the two girls came to stand before the delayed teachers.

"For you," Quinn pointed, while Rachel held out the box. "Merry Christmas!" she declared.

"What is this?" the teacher smiled, tapping the little bell.

"We made them for you," Rachel announced.

"We made a lot," Quinn went on.

"But you get more," Rachel beamed. They loved their teacher very much.

"Wow, can I open it?" she asked, pointing to the box, and the girls nodded energetically. "You made all of these?"

"Why do they all ask that?" Rachel frowned. "They're for you," she then insisted. "Not others." Quinn nodded her agreement.

"Right," the teacher laughed. "Well in that case I am going to take these home, so no one can touch them," she gave the girls a conspiratorial nod. There was a small smile on her lips as she closed the box again, and they may have been five years old, but they were very good at reading people, to know if they were happy or not, and they could see something in that smile she had been sad before, but they'd just made it go away without realizing. "Thank you, girls," she perched the box on her knees for a beat, managing not to knock it over as she tapped Rachel and Quinn's shoulders. "Thank you."

TO BE CONCLUDED (WEDNESDAY)


	4. Two Christmas Stars

**"Christmas Past"**

**4. Two Christmas Stars**

Their two families would be having their own evenings, their own dinners, at their respective houses, but once all this was said and done, then the girls knew what would come next: they had requested it, and their parents had agreed. Rachel's fathers had taken her to Quinn's house, and she would stay the night there, so that the two of them could stalk the jolly man.

Within minutes of arriving, the girls were already changing into their pyjamas. They had watched a movie with Quinn's parents and sister, and then they had been told to go to bed. They wanted to sleep in the living room, where the tree was set, where the milk and cookies – made by them of course – would be left waiting for their honored guest, so blankets and pillows had been brought to the couch. They were small enough that, with one girl's head at one end and the other's at the other, they both had their space, and the blanket could cover them both. It had taken some time to get them to settle down and stop kicking their feet together in the middle. For some time after that they could still hear the pair of them laughing about it. Eventually, they had allowed themselves to doze off.

This was only a ruse, of course, or it was meant to be. They would lie there, pretending to sleep, until everyone else had gone up and done the same. That had been the plan, but being just five years old, eventually the game of pretending had become reality and they had dozed off. It had taken another kick, unintentional in sleep but real enough, for them to wake up. Rachel had kicked Quinn, who'd woken with a start, looked around, then kicked back.

"Ow!" Rachel protested, waking, too. Quinn shushed her.

"It's night! We fell asleep!" she whispered.

"Did he come?" Rachel blinked, rubbing at her eyes. Quinn looked at the tree, the plate and glass…

"Not yet," she sat up. "We didn't miss it!" Rachel sat up as well, smiling. "I think he's like us," Quinn declared.

"Like us?" Rachel repeated, and Quinn nodded. "Like us how?"

"He makes people happy," she explained. "All you have to do is see him. All you have to do is think about him. Then you're not sad anymore."

"Yeah," Rachel agreed, smiling. "But he only comes when it's Christmas. He should come more."

"He's special," Quinn shook her head. "Maybe there's more like us everywhere and we don't know," she pondered. "We can't help all the people, there's too many."

"Right. We have to keep going." Quinn nodded at this, stretching her hand out to her best friend. Rachel knew what this was, and she did the same, combining their two hands to create the symbol they had invented to represent the Sunshine Girls. After this, they had rearranged their sleeping arrangement so that they would use the one pillow, turned sideways, at the center of the couch, to hold both their heads. They had easily found a second blanket, so that they could both have warmth.

"How long before he comes?" Quinn had whispered once they had gone to lie down again. Rachel looked to the tree before turning her eyes up to meet hers.

"I don't know. He has to go all over the place, to give presents to everyone. Maybe he isn't here yet."

"Oh, okay," Quinn accepted this.

"What if he doesn't like the cookies?"

"He has to like the cookies, they're cookies, they're good, and he's Santa. What if he doesn't like milk?"

"Milk and cookies, they go together," Rachel frowned.

"My Nana drinks coffee with cookies."

"Milk is okay," Rachel promised. Quinn gasped. "What? Did you hear something?" Rachel went to sit up.

"No, the reindeer! I don't think they eat cookies. They have to be hungry, they have to fly a long time."

"What do they eat?" Silence fell as they thought. "We can ask your mom."

"No," Quinn refused.

"Carrots!" Rachel suddenly exclaimed, and Quinn's hands had shot up to try and cover her mouth as she shushed her for the second time that night.

"Good idea!" Quinn whispered, and they got up to go to the refrigerator. Once they had pulled the door open, they had quickly found the vegetables, lugging the entire bag and bringing it to lie next to the plate of cookies. "Careful!" Quinn warned, so they wouldn't knock the milk over.

Back on their couch bed, Quinn had tapped Rachel's hand, to make her look up. "What?" the brunette asked. Quinn hesitated.

"Do you think we can do it again next Christmas?"

"Yeah!" Rachel was instantly excited. "And the year after that… and the year after that…" Quinn smiled.

"Promise?" she asked. Rachel held out her hand, and Quinn took it.

"Promise."

Tried as they might, once again, they had drifted off to sleep in their wait for Santa to come and visit the Fabray house. They couldn't know that, of course, 'Santa' in this case came in the form of Russell and Judy Fabray, who snuck down, making sure the girls were properly asleep before they could very quietly lay out the presents. Rachel had a few for her there, too, as her fathers didn't want her feeling left out, if she was to spend Christmas morning with them. The tags made sure to make note of her relocation, the better to display the 'magic of Santa.'

They wouldn't wake again until it was morning. The plate was empty, save for crumbs, the milk had been drained, and the carrots were gone, though a note had taken their place, thanking the girls on behalf of Dasher and Dancer and the rest of their lot. With time this note would come to safekeeping, before it could be inserted, years later, into a scrapbook to be passed on, from one generation of All-Mighty Sunshine Girls down to another, and the next, and the one after that…

THE END

_**Up next, check out "Christmas Present", a Wemma story starting tomorrow**_


End file.
